ares with God. As Dr. Caird puts it,[785] "the ruling power
of Reason so dominates his nature that he cannot be described as
anything but a self-conscious _ego_ (_i.e._ in contrast with other
animals); and just because of this, all his impulses become concentrated
in one great effort after self-realisation." But the self that he tries
to realise must be his true self, not his irrational impulses: the self
which is a part of the divine principle. He must desire to realise
himself as having Reason, and so to come into close communion with God,
the Reason of the universe. Those who are at all familiar with the later
Roman Stoics, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, if we may
include him among them, will recognise in this inspiring thought, vague
and impalpable as it may seem, the germ of many beautiful expressions of
the relation of Man to God, which seem to bring Stoicism into closer
spiritual connection with Christianity than any other doctrine of the
ancient world.

The work of Cicero from which I have been quoting, the first book of his
treatise on the Laws, _i.e._ the Roman constitution, is very probably
based on one by Panaetius himself,[786] of whom we are expressly told
that he used to discuss that constitution together with Polybius and
Scipio in the days of their happy intimacy at Rome.[787] In any case we
may find it helpful, taken together with the earlier fragmentary work
_de Republica_, in trying to form some idea of the effect of this second
leading Stoic thought on the best Roman minds of the last ages of the
Republic. We find, as we might expect, that it is not on Man simply as
individual that stress is here laid. Man is not thought of as hoping to
realise his own Reason in isolation; the Stoics, though, like their
rivals, they represent a reaction of the individual against the State,
were all along perfectly clear that man in isolation would be helpless,
and that his own reason bade him realise himself in association with his
fellow-men.[788] It is the position of Man, as associated, 1, with God,
2, with other men, that is here made prominent; and the bond of
connection is in each case Law, which is indeed only one name for the
Supreme Reason and the highest Good. I must say a word about these two
aspects of Man's position in the world, in order to explain what I
believe to have been the effect of this teaching on the Roman mind.

1. In explaining the relation of Man to God Cicero uses an expressio